Surfactant aggregates within deep eutectic solvent-assisted synthesis of hierarchical ZIF-8 with tunable porosity and enhanced catalytic activity

An efficient template-assisted method was put forward for synthesizing hierarchical ZIF-8 (HZIF-8) particles, which was implemented in green solvent deep eutectic solvent and using sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) as template. Moreover, the porosity of HZIF-8 can be readily tuned by varying water content and the amount of SDS in solutions, because the template SDS aggregates within DES can be easily adjusted. The formation process of HZIF-8 was investigated via dynamic light scattering measurement and dissipative particle dynamics simulation. In particular, an essential understanding of influence of ZIF-8 surface area, the amount of acid–base and porosity on catalytic activity was established. The catalytic activity of HZIF-8 in the cycloaddition between CO2 and small molecule epoxide was mainly affected by surface area and amount of acid–base, whereas for the cycloaddition between CO2 and bulky molecule epoxide, the catalytic activity of HZIF-8 was mainly affected by porosity and amount of acid–base. The excellent properties and enhanced catalytic activity of the HZIF-8 make it into a promising material in varieties of bulky molecule catalytic reactions that cannot be performed through the use of purely microporous ZIF-8.